‘The Creator’ In IMAX: Director Gareth Edward’s Says His Sci-Fi Epic Is “‘Apocalypse Now’ Meets ‘Blade Runner’” [First Look Recap]

One of the most anticipated sci-fi film of 2023 — particularly now, with “Dune: Part Two” having been pushed back to 2024 — has got to be Gareth Edwards‘ latest feature,”The Creator.” Edwards’ first film since 2016’s “Rogue One” Lucasfilm movies, this new thriller is set in the year 2070, in the midst of a war over the future of artificial intelligence. “The Creator” stars John David Washington as Sgt. Joshua Taylor, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, who is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war along with mankind itself. At an IMAX event streamed live from AMC Century City in Los Angeles to cinemas across North America, Edwards sat down and gave a sneak peek at three scenes from “The Creator,” all of which showcased the film’s combination of a guerrilla filmmaking-esque Vietnam War aesthetic with ’90s-era analog tech, brought together to culminate in a breathtaking-looking piece of original sci-fi. Or, as Edwards himself calls it, “’Apocalypse Now’ meets ‘Blade Runner‘”

An inevitable topic of discussion was the unintended, almost scary topicality of “The Creator,” which is an AI-centric story in which the technology is presented as an existential threat. “I didn’t want to name a year for the story because even Kubrick got that wrong, but at some point you have to,” said Edwards. “So I did some math and picked 2070. It felt like researching jetpacks or a man on Mars, cause it felt in 2018, when I started writing, that this was decades away. I should’ve gone for 2023,” Edwards said cheekily, referring to the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. “Everything that’s unfolded in the last few months has basically been the setup to the movie.”

Edwards also talked the audience through his process of writing “The Creator.” “I wasn’t deliberately thinking of an idea for a film, but driving across America [to Iowa] I was looking out the window and getting inspired,” recounted Edwards. “I saw this factory in the middle of the tall grass, and I remember wondering, ‘what are they making in there? Oh, probably robots,'” Edwards joked, referring to the fact that all of his features to date have been science fiction. “And then I thought, ‘imagine you’re a robot built in a factory, and you step outside for the first time and see the skies. What would that be like?’ I thought that would be a good moment in a movie, but I didn’t know what the movie was. But ideas kept coming, and by end of the drive I had the movie mapped out in my head, which never happens.”

Edwards promptly got in touch with concept artists he knew to commission artwork of his ideas – concept art became the guiding light for the project – and once he had the visual concepts on canvas, brought the idea to New Regency Productions, who greenlit “The Creator” – despite its ambitious, epic scope – after hearing about Edwards’ radical strategy to cut down costs. “You look at the imagery and how ambitious it is, and the natural reaction is ‘this is a $300 million film, we can’t do it,” said Edwards. To counter the unavoidable expense of building elaborate sets which matched his concept art, Edwards explained, “I said, ‘no, we’re gonna film it with a very small crew, and reverse engineer the movie. We’re gonna shoot the movie in real life locations that look closest to the images, and then when it’s fully edited, get the production design to paint over the frames and put the sci-fi on top.”

There’s a resultant freeform, flowing energy to the film – as showcased in the three scenes shown at the event – that goes against the grain of a typical blockbuster; “The Creator” eschewed rigid, elaborate shot compositions and endless dozens of setups with a more handheld, loose set that enabled long takes, and quick resets rather than grabbing one shot at a time. “The thing that works against you is lighting, and the second you move the camera you see the lights and so you have to move everything,” said Edwards. “I thought, with how lightweight lights have become, why can’t you use lights the way you use a boom operator and a microphone? So we had a crew member running around holding the light by hand, and if an actor did something different or I liked a change, we could make a lighting adjustment that would normally take ten minutes, in about four seconds. So we’d do 25 minute takes where we’d play out the scene three or four times, and get this atmosphere where it wasn’t so prescribed.”

On his filmmaking heroes, Edwards stated, “My influences are probably obvious, but Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Ridley Scott…what we were trying to do was go back to the style of film we grew up loving. We shot on 1970s’ anamorphic lenses. I took a trip to Vietnam while writing, and you can’t go to that country without thinking of all the imagery from films like ‘Apocalypse Now.’ But everything I was writing was about robots, I’d picture them in these places, and “‘Blade Runner‘ meets ‘Apocalypse Now'” became the fastest way to describe it.” On top of that Edwards cited films such as “Baraka,” “Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance,” “Paper Moon,” and perhaps the most surprising, “Rain Man.” “In terms of the dynamic [between John David Washington and Madeleine Yuna Voyles], a little bit of ‘Rain Man.’ It’s kind of a journey with someone normal and someone who’s gifted, a little bit different,” said Edwards.

Finally, regarding sci-fi and why he so frequently returns to the genre, Edwards elaborated: “I like it because you can sneak things under the radar. My favorite show growing up was ‘The Twilight Zone.‘ Rod Serling did sci-fi because he could get things under the radar of the censors. I think if deliberately try to make a social commentary film, it’s gonna be rubbish. There’s something very primal about writing about something and realizing halfway through what it really is, like a child who tells you what they want to be when they grow up, so you try to help it. Science fiction does that the best because we all go through our lives with certain beliefs that are never tested, and then science fiction says, ‘well, what if the world had this different thing about it?’ The thing you think is true turns out to be false. I love when cinema does that, and I hope our film does it too.” If the three scenes we just saw are any indication, “The Creator” will not only achieve Edwards’ hopes, but 20th Century Studios has something very special on their hands.

“The Creator” hits theaters on September 29th, 2023.